The Schwa Was Here

My parents had a fight on the day I got demoted to dog walker. Maybe it was no worse than other fights they had over the years, but I noticed it a whole lot more. Maybe because seeing the Schwa's sorry home life made me more tuned in to my own.

I heard them even before I walked in the door. They were screaming at each other like the Antonoviches two doors down, who would end our dependence on foreign oil if you could harness the sheer vocal energy of their fights.

"It's the Big One," Frankie said when I came in the door. "I esti­mate eight-point-six on the Richter scale. Better hold on to some­thing." He pretended to watch TV while listening to the fight.

Christina crouched by the kitchen door, sticking her nose in, and writing in her diary. "It began at five-eleven pm," she said. "Thirty-seven minutes straight, so far."

"Red sauce?" I heard Mom yell. "I'll give you red saucel"

We all knew the Big One was a clear and present danger. For years we hoped the pressure could be released through smaller tremors, and for years it had worked. I was beginning to think maybe the Big One wouldn't come at all.

"If it wasn't for me, you'd all starve!" Mom yelled.

"At least we'd be out of our misery!" Dad shouted back.

The Big One was all about food. Mom was no slouch when it came to cooking—but, like I said, Dad stood in a league by himself. No parent I know—mother or father—could whip up dishes the way my dad did, but he didn't often get the chance, because the kitchen was Mom's. Dad might have been the Vice- Vice-President of Product Development for Pisher Plastics, but Mom was the Empress of Bonano Food Productions, and I pity the fool who challenges her reign.

Dad was that fool. It was his destiny.

Well, if the Big One was tonight, they picked the wrong day to have it. I had just walked fourteen dogs, been dumped by a blind girl, been dumped on by her grandfather, and right now I wanted a cold soda.

"Antsy, don't go in there," Frankie warned. "We ain't got any body bags."

I figured I could slip in and out unnoticed. The Antsy Effect was nowhere near as potent as the Schwa Effect, but in my own family, it worked just as well.

I pushed my way past Christina, who was scribbling her life away in the diary, logging her impressions of the battle for fu­ture generations.

The scene was weirdly dramatic. Like something out of Shakespeare. Dad waved a spatula in the air as he spoke, mak­ing him look like a swordsman, and Mom spoke with her hands so much, it looked like karate.

"I'm tired of eating your family's lousy, tasteless recipes," Dad said.

"Tasteless recipes? My grandmother's rolling in her grave!"

"It's from indigestion."

She threw an artichoke at him, and he batted it away with the spatula.

I went to the refrigerator, took out a Coke, and then some­thing very strange happened. I flashed to Howie and Ira play­ing "Three Fisted Fury," ignoring the Schwa. Anger began to boil up inside me. Yeah, I could get in and out of that kitchen unnoticed, but suddenly I didn't want to. I didn't want to ever again. I had a right to be noticed.

"Excuse me," I said, loudly. "If you two are just going to argue all night, I'll cook dinner; otherwise we'll all be rolling in our graves from parental starvation."

"Don't you open up a mout like that!" Mom said.

"Go back to the living room," Dad said. "This isn't your problem."

"BullpuckyI" I said, which isn't actually the word I used, but I'm in a much better mood now than I was then.

When she heard that, Mom drew in a breath kind of like the way the ocean sucks back before a tidal wave. "What did you say?!"

"I said it's time to eat. If you wanna fight, why don't you lose a few teeth and go on a daytime talk show?"

Mom glared at me, and crossed her arms. "Do you hear this?" she says to Dad. "Where do you learn this disrespect, huh?"

"You don't learn disrespect," I told her. "You're born with it."

"Just keep digging that hole deeper, Antsy," Dad said. So now all their anger had turned away from each other and was aimed at me. There was awesome power in being the center of fury.

"You want to earn your dinner, smart mout?" Mom says. "You tell us—who makes a better fra diavolo sauce. Me or your father?"

It was a stupid question, because who really cared, and yet I knew the answer was critical. The old Antsy would have found some way to distract them from the argument and, failing that, would have said something to keep the peace, like "Mom's is better with pasta, Dad's is better with meat" or "Dad's is spicier, but Mom's is heartier." An answer would have held everything together and would have eventually gotten things back to normal.

Then it occurred to me exactly what my place in this family was, and had always been. In spite of my wisecracking, pain-in- the-neck ways, I was the clip that held things together. Unno­ticed. Taken for granted. Okay, maybe I'm giving myself too much credit here, but I'd be damned if I was gonna keep on being the family paper clip.

"You gonna answer us or not?"

"You want the truth?" I asked.